It’s important to remember that before an end to the US embargo of Cuba became even remotely conceivable, certain major international developments had to take place: the profound political shift in Latin America, the moving election of the first black president of the United States (a man, moreover, committed to change in its widest sense) and the financial and economic cataclysm that has shaken the capitalist system to its roots. Without these events the commercial, economic and financial embargo/blockade of Cuba, decreed 47 years ago (since February 1962) may have continued for who knows how long in its perennial form, condemned by many in international forums, denounced by the Cuban Government, suffered by the Cuban people and kept in place by successive US administrations that believed it could force political change in Havana.
But the change that Washington was after never came and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had to recognize, finally, the clear failure of the US policy towards Cuba. In his speech to the Fifth Summit of the Americas meeting in Port of Spain, Trinidad, last April, President Barack Obama went even further, suggesting: ‘I think that we can move Cuban-American relations in a new direction.’ He made it clear that he was not talking this way just to look good in a setting where the lack of representatives from Cuba and the problem of the embargo were recurring issues.
